CTLT faculty and staff members Dr. Denise Crawford and Dennis Culver joined School of Education colleagues Dr. Connie Beecher, Dr. Soo Ahn, Dr. Emily Hayden, and Dr. Sara Nelson in Atlantic, IA on June 6th and Humboldt, IA on June 7th as part of ISU College of Human Sciences Extension and Outreach’s “Adventure Comes to You” series.

CTLT staff members Tera Lawson and Dennis Culver along with student assistant Sariah Garrido hosted activities as part of Kate Mitchell Elementary’s STEAM night on April 26th. Several groups from ISU and the Ames community provides activities for the elementary students that explored topics in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics.

The CTLT’s activities had students using iPads, Osmo kits, and Dash robots to engage in activities that focused on coding concepts, engineering design, and entrepreneurship.

Dennis Culver visited Northwood Preschool Center in Ames on Feb. 1st and 26th to discuss robots. The students were working on a project based learning activity that focused on learning about what robots can do, how they move, how we communicate with them, and what makes a robot a robot.

Roland-Story Middle School held their first STEM Day on December 6, 2017 as part of the global Computer Science Education Week. Dennis Culver was invited to present to 5th-8th graders on how to get started with coding. Dennis taught the 5-6th graders about sequencing, loops, and conditional statements using Osmo Coding. The 7-8th graders were introduced to Apple’s Swift programming language with the the Swift Playgrounds iPad app.

Dennis Culver, CTLT Instructional Support Specialist, and Tera Lawson, CTLT Program Coordinator, both presented to current ISU student teachers during their student teaching seminar on Oct. 13, 2017 at the ISU Alumni Center. Dennis and Tera discussed how to bridge content areas with technology and how to integrate robotics into an elementary curriculum. Students were provided with several hands-on experiences to model how various technologies could be incorporated into their future classrooms.